Read Online The Detective and the Woman by Amy Thomas - Free Book Online

on the arm of Ambrose McGregor, Holmes could tell something had seriously rattled her, which he hadn’t expected. With sudden horror, he wondered if the older man had bothered her in some personal way. The detective’s eyes searched her keenly, but Irene’s smile and enthusiastic thanks seemed to convince the others, at least, that all was well. Mercifully, goodbyes were soon said, and within minutes he had his companion settled into a hired runabout. It was hardly elegant, but carriages were hard to come by in Fort Myers. As soon as he had handed Irene up, he retrieved a blanket from the floor behind, tucking it around her knees like a solicitous husband might.
    ‘I’m quite warm enough, Bernard,’ she said calmly, though none of the others were around to hear. Holmes hopped up beside her and studied her face, trying to ascertain her state of mind, punishing himself mentally for allowing her to go unaccompanied into danger, but she remained quiet, and her face remained impassive until they reached Mrs Stillwell’s house.
    Holmes willed his hands to be especially gentle as he helped Irene down from the carriage. She was small, he realised. He had never considered it, not properly, not as anything more than a statistical fact. The prints her feet made in the dirt pathway to the back door were tiny, practically a child’s prints. Why, oh why, had he been foolish enough to send her off alone with the man? His mind, the fallible organ to which he attached such trust, had painted a picture of The Woman as a force, a tower of strength. He now realised that she was both more and less than that, and he cursed himself inwardly for his lack of concern.
    As they mounted the stairs to his room at Mrs Stillwell’s, Holmes’s hand hovered in the vicinity of Irene’s elbow in case she should lose her footing. He did not touch her. She still remained speechless, and he wondered if he would have to employ some unusual method to cause her to explain the encounter. He knew that wronged women were often loathe to speak of their experiences for days or even weeks, and some, he had heard, even refused to speak at all. He could not afford for her to be one of those.
    The proprietress of the house was prodigiously proud of having electricity and of living so near the inventor of the lightbulb himself, as she had eagerly told Holmes upon his arrival, and she charged dearly for both. The detective turned on the prized electric light as soon as he and Irene had entered the worn upstairs room, and he watched his companion remove her hat and wash her hands in the basin. Having finished, she turned and looked him full in the face.
    ‘My goodness, Holmes, you look as if you’ve seen a spectre.’ The detective sat down in the lone wooden chair and watched her, puzzled. ‘Since you have not asked me the content of my conversation with Ambrose McGregor, I can only assume you thought it as prudent as I did to wait until we were privately secluded.’ As she spoke, Irene sat down on the edge of the uncomfortable bed and unpinned her chestnut hair, letting it fall in waves down her back. Holmes supposed that she felt no shame in this, since, after all, the man before her had once seen her dressed as a young man.
    ‘I hope very much that you will not blame me, Holmes.’ Her eyes pleaded with him, though he saw no evidence of personal injury or offense and began to conclude that his original assessment of her distress had been mistakenly reasoned. ‘McGregor’s aim and purpose was to save me from the unfortunate fate of a deceived woman. In short, Holmes, he went through all that trouble to tell me that my husband was none other than the famed English detective Sherlock Holmes.’
    At this, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, consulting detective to queen and country, threw back his head and laughed, but The Woman did not join him. ‘Believe me, Holmes,’ she continued when he had subsided, ‘my initial inclination was the same as yours, but the